Steve Jobs threatened a patent lawsuit against Palm, a leading phone handset maker, unless it agreed to stop poaching Apple’s employees, according to court documents revealed this week.

The late co-founder of Apple appears to make the threat in an e-mail uncovered by a lawsuit brought against some of Silicon Valley’s leading companies, alleging there was a conspiracy to stop competition for talent to reduce wages across the technology industry.

The defendants in the case, which include Google, Apple and Intel among others, have fought to keep certain documents secret. But a Californian judge forced the companies to release some